Steve King

I paid a garage a lot of money to do this job on my first Defender (a 300 TDI) and it started leaking after a month or so. The garage blamed all kinds of things such as crankcase pressure, scoring etc and refused to do anything further. I contacted Les Henson, who did the job for a reasonable price and it never leaked another drop of oil from that area again!

I finally got around to fitting grease nipples to the unknown make wheel carrier yesterday. There are 4. Pivot points and I fitted grease nipples to 3 of these without any problems. The last one - the joint closest to the wheel rotates a long way and the only place I could fit a nipple without it fouling something as the door opens and closes is inaccessible without partial dismantling!! If I'm able to drill a communicating hole from the arm to the bearing I will try fitting a nipple to the arm.....

It is one of the jobs, that I intend to get around to... With a bit of luck and a following wind I'll have sorted out the heated seats by next winter.... !! Seriously though, having to work a lot of Saturdays and having a 9 year old with more social activities than you can shake a stick at does leave me nearly enough time as I'd like for working on my Defender.

Ive no idea what make carrier is fitted to my 110! It was fitted when I bought it. Whilst it does not have grease nipples, it is very easy to take apart and grease as part of an annual service. The carrier has not been powder coated (just painted) and has remained rust free the past seven years!

Escape Gear covers are good but not cheap. I've had mine around 7 years and only minimal wear. Comfortable in hot and cold weather and work fine with heated seats too.

I had to go into Bromsgrove today so that our 9 year old little one could buy a birthday present for her friend. I decided to drive the long way back via the (tarmac) lanes between Stoke Prior, Tardebigge and Finstall. Impressive snow drifts in places up to 4 ft deep! The local farmers have cleared most of the lanes. Apologies for the poor quality phone pics, but Leah did the best she could!

Aah that explains what it is!! My TD5 has one of those in the battery box! It had me scratching my head because I thought it was part of the clamp to secure the battery and I couldn't see how on earth it fitted when I came to replace the battery!!!!

It could go well above £19 million I think! The cost of removing the vehicles and demolishing the car park needs to be factored in too. If forensic evidence points to one car being the proximate cause of the blaze, then the other insurers (car, contents and building ) will try to recover costs from the insurer of the offending car. I work in household insurance and we have already had our instructions regarding contents of cars in that car park!

Around four inches here! In places where the snow has drifted there is around eight inches! Trains are descending the Lickey Incline v e r y slowly!! However the. Trains are very few and far between as most are cancelled! i ventured out in my 110, but first I had to swap the cars around! This meant digging out the .Fiesta which took a while! The roads and the lanes around Finstall were almost empty of cars apart from a few Defenders, Range Rovers and Discoverys. I wonder why I didn't see any BMWs?!! Conditions were not that bad on the whole - the powdery stuff was easy to drive, but where it had melted and frozen again it was very slippery.

No snow around here! Just a -3 C temperature first thing this morning!

Seen on an industrial estate in Wellingborough.

If the fuses check out ok, it may be worth checking the connections behind the dash. I had a similar problem with the dash lights and the near side indicators and eventually traced the problem to a connector that wasn't fully pushed home.

Do you really need to adjust the mirrors whilst driving? For me once they are adjusted correctly that's it (unless you keep finding your near side mirror wrongly adjusted everyday and eventually find some random, vain guy styling his hair using the door mirror - but that's another story!) Perhaps the aftermarket larger mirrors might be a cheaper option?

I take it you go for the "Eco Look" then Les!

After it is clean a bit of polish helps prevent the next load of crud sticking too badly!

Thanks; that's really helpful. The heated seats are factory fitted. I'm hoping it is something simple, because both have packed up at the same time.

I have a 2002 TD5 and all of a sudden both heated front seats have stopped working! i haven't yet had a chance to investigate with a multi meter, but could anyone point me in the right direction please? The bulb illuminates on both of the switches when they are pushed in. Is the fuse after the switch circuit?

Very scary, but at least you are OK! My brother had an interesting experience in the Libyan desert whilst working on an oil rig, when a stupid grudge against him left a wheel attached by a single nut!

I'm glad you managed to sort it! I dread to think how much time I spent on it!

I sympathise! I adjusted mine from one extreme to the other (including all points inbetween), tried every single hole for the cable, got fed up paid a trusted garage to fix it (they failed). I next tried new pads (original ones worn from juddering) to no avail - juddering continued despite another round of adjustment. At this point I decided life was too short to try and achieve a non juddering X Brake!

Personally I find the broquetes extremely effective. They are wonderful on the BBQ for cooking sausages and burgers! Oops I think I may have confused them with charcoal brickettes!

Ouch, but could have been worse! I once wired in a music system on a very temporary basis in a car. On the day I was going to replace the temporary wiring, I went to a local shop to buy a few things and on the way back there was a flash and the car filled up with smoke! The entire front loom was fried! Rewiring involved striping a loom from a scrapper and spending around three days adapting and fitting the loom! Good luck!

I don't know anywhere you can wild camp; you would need permission from the land owner. If it's walking you're after why not try Bowes? You can walk part of the Pennine Way, have a pint in the Tan Hill Tavern etc! The is a basic camp site at the far end of the village and I've never seen it completely full.

I had a 300 TDi for around 7 years and it was pretty reliable, I eventually sold it because at the time I lived in London and the LEZ was being expanded and it was not compliant. I bought a TD5 to replace it and I'm very happy with it - more torque, a bit quieter and more civilzed! The only downside is that the TD5 is more thirsty! My 300 TDi could achieve 35 mpg on a long run, my TD 5 does (at best) 27 mpg!

I didn't use a comparison site: it was on Flux's own site!